Anatomy of a Block Party

Last weekend we held a small outdoor community event in recognition of Earth Hour that I’m proud to have been a part of.

How Mountain View’s Earth Hour Hot Chocolate Party came about is a combination of chance and modern technology. First, a little background on the community.

Vancouver’s Mountain View Neighbourhood rose up from a very difficult time in its history. The 1990s were not kind to this patch of East Vancouver along Fraser Street. Social disease was the order of the day. Grow ops took root, bad guys roamed, and prostitutes were present on the streets after dark.

A group of neighbours decided they had enough and banded together. They met at a local church basement and the Mountain View Neighbourhood Group was born. Today many from this same group of community leaders continue to add to the area’s quality of life.

Together we have created boulevard gardens, lobbied for the creation of a Country Lane (the first in the City), created street banners, sidewalk mosaics, and now a mural. The community supports neighbourhood foot patrols in cooperation with the community policing centre, and they maintain a website, neighbourhood email list and even a Facebook group to keep everyone informed.

We meet to discuss our community’s future, and to foster the spirit of volunteerism. We also make excuses to get together over a plate of food at our annual potluck BBQ.
This year we decided to step up activity around block parties. They are not hard to organize, hardly expensive at all to fund, yet they have terrific benefits in building community.
Fast forward to Earth Hour, March 2008. In advance of the event we circulated a few emails inviting people out. The City and BC Hydro (the power company) were asking us to turn off our lights at 8pm on a cool early Spring evening. You could do that and sit in the dark by candlelight, or do what we did and invite the neighbourhood out for hot chocolate!

You can see the photo slide show above. The little idea worked. Lots of neighbours, and many new faces, came out with their kids and sipped warm beverages in the cool night air.

The gratifying part is that for the cost of giving out a few free cups of hot cocoa this neighbourhood became an even better place to live.